Sunday 15 December 2013

The world outside

I blog about my life. It was always meant as some sort of diary and I've been wondering whether I should try to include 'external', historical, political events, too. Might be interesting when reading it back in the future. If I ever read it back...

I've also been thinking about introducing a recurring themed blog post. I enjoy other blogs where they have a certain theme that repeats on a certain day each week. So, why not combine the two? Not sure yet how (if) I will implement this.

Nelson Mandela's death on 5 December 2013 at the age of 95 has been dominating the news. He had been in hospital for a long time and according to some rumours he had been kept alive only because his family's disagreements. His death was announced the night of the premiere in London of the film 'Mandela, long walk to freedom'. His life story is incredible. Released from prison only in 1990 after nearly 28 years (!) to be elected as president of South Africa just 4 years later in 1994. The fact that apartheid lasted until the 90s is shocking really.

His memorial service held at the FNB stadium in Johannesburg last week led to a number of unexpected headlines: there was the selfie that Barack Obama took with the Danish Prime Minister, with David Cameron squeezing into the photo and Michelle Obama's (supposedly) disapprovingly looking on, a stadium that was only filled two thirds, as organizers had been concerned about over-crowding and also due to heavy rain and of course the sign language interpreter who was found out having used bogus sign language - which he blamed on having a schizophrenic episode. Turned out that there had been complaints about his signing ability previously.

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